1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a coordinate input device with display, which allows an easy input and display of data such as hand-written characters and patterns, as well as production of a hard copy of the displayed data.
2. Description of the Prior Art
An apparatus for inputting and outputting data such as hand-written characters and patterns through a tablet which is constructed separately from a display on which the result of recognition of the inputted data is displayed. In the use of this type of apparatus, the user is obliged to alternately watch both the tablet surface and the display screen, in order to confirm that the characters and patterns hand-written on the tablet have been recognized and inputted correctly. Consequently, the efficiency of the inputting operation by hand-writing is impaired considerably. In this type of apparatus, the position of the character to be corrected or deleted during editing is appointed by means of a cursor. Therefore, the user has to operate keys to move the cursor on display while carefully watching both the instant position of the cursor on display and the aimed character in the original text. This seriously impairs the efficiency of the operation.
In order to obviate this problem, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 144287/1983 discloses an inputting/outputting apparatus in which the tablet and the display are integrated with each other. With this apparatus, the designated position in the document on display can be directly appointed on the tablet by means of a stylus pen which is connected to a character recognition circuit, so that the edition and inputting/outputting operation are facilitated considerably. Namely, the user can input the data simply by "writing" the sentence on the tablet in a manner as if he is writing the sentence directly on an output paper sheet.
This apparatus, however, still suffers from the following disadvantage. Namely, the "writing" operation for inputting the characters on the writing area of the tablet is seriously impeded by the presence of the cord through which the stylus pen is connected to the character recognition circuit. In addition, precision of position appointment is failed unless the stylus pen is held in contact with or in the close proximity of the tablet.
The display can hold the image of the inputted data only temporarily. It is, therefore, desirable that the data can be recorded by, for example, plotting or printing on a recording paper sheet.